The recent 6.7 magnitude quake off the coast of Taiwan resulted in severed fiber and a routing nightmare for many Asian network operators. The fiber redundancy we take for granted in the States (320 GB/s between NY and London) is severely lacking in the Pacific. While the quake renewed calls for added Asia fiber routes, the reality is that soaring demand in Asia was already prompting companies -- some just recovering from the nineties fiber glut -- to act.

Note the $500 million, 11,000 mile route that Verizon Business yesterday reminded everyone they are planning, which will ultimately provide 5 terabits of connectivity between Oregon and China, with stops in Tanshui, Taiwan, and Keoje, South Korea. Of course, not everyone thinks it's worth adding more fiber routes -- the biggest telcos in both South Korea and Taiwan today claimed no upgrades are necessary because earthquakes are "rare" in the Pacific.

Hidden among the expected post-quake dissections of the net's frailty was a discussion over the impact the outage had on overall global spam levels. A network admin for one Wyoming ISP proclaimed they saw a massive drop in spam, complaining that "95% of the traffic we receive from the Asia-Pacific region is spam." One network operator in Hong Kong reminds them that the U.S. is still top dog when it comes to spam output, and the reason all their e-mail from Asia is spam is because the users of their "tiny ISP in Podunk" don't know anyone in Asia.